Presto Fresh expansion ramps up across T&T

Agos­ti­ni Group is bet­ting big on con­ve­nience re­tail, rolling out a  re­vamped “Presto Fresh” con­cept that blends barista cof­fee, ready-made  meals, and the fa­mil­iar Lin­da’s pas­tries cus­tomers al­ready know.  

Di­rec­tor of New Busi­ness at Agos­ti­ni Lim­it­ed, Jean Luc Mout­tet, told  Guardian Me­dia that the com­pa­ny is push­ing ahead with a ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion dri­ve across its store net­work, de­spite tighter eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.  

Speak­ing at the launch of Presto Fresh O’Meara last Thurs­day, Mout­tet said the con­cept was first in­tro­duced at the Aranguez lo­ca­tion and is de­signed to serve cus­tomers seek­ing fast, con­ve­nient meal op­tions.  

“We’ve in­tro­duced fresh barista cof­fee, hot and cold. We still have the same Lin­da’s pas­tries you know and love, which are ex­clu­sive­ly sold to us by Lin­da’s man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty. We’ve in­tro­duced the Presto meals that you would know from Su­per­Pharm, the sushi, the  

sand­wich­es, our wide range of desserts, our fruit cups,” Mout­tet said.  

“We still have the same fresh bread here from Lin­da’s, as well as ro­tis­serie chick­en. So, it’s re­al­ly el­e­vat­ing that con­cept and tak­ing it to the next lev­el, mak­ing peo­ple’s lives more con­ve­nient but al­so bring­ing a fresh­ness to peo­ple’s lives that we be­lieve was need­ed in  

the coun­try.”  

The O’Meara out­let is the first ful­ly trans­formed lo­ca­tion un­der the com­pa­ny’s Im­age En­hance­ment Pro­gramme, which is con­vert­ing long-stand­ing Lin­da’s stores in­to the new­er PrestoFresh for­mat.  

Mout­tet said the shift is de­signed to mod­ernise the stores while keep­ing the prod­ucts cus­tomers have grown ac­cus­tomed to.  

“When we first took over these stores two years ago, Lin­da's con­cept was kind of out­dat­ed. So, it need­ed to move to the next lev­el, and this was just our grad­ual step to that next lev­el of in­tro­duc­ing the barista cof­fee and the meals and hav­ing the same pas­tries but tak­ing it to the next lev­el of qual­i­ty.”  

The re­vamped stores are built around what the com­pa­ny calls four pil­lars — “Fresh, Easy, Quick, Lo­cal.”  

Mout­tet said the busi­ness has de­lib­er­ate­ly fo­cused on sourc­ing lo­cal­ly as for­eign ex­change chal­lenges con­tin­ue to af­fect many com­pa­nies. “If I’m be­ing hon­est with you, when it comes to for­eign ex­change, it isn’t re­al­ly a con­straint for us in­side this busi­ness. As you can see  

from our slo­gan, we’re fresh, easy, quick, and lo­cal. So, we try to sup­port as many lo­cal ven­dors as we can.”  

“All of our pro­duce, our pas­tries, every­thing is pro­duced lo­cal­ly and bought in TT dol­lars. Even with a lot of the out­fit­ting and fix­tures you see in­side the build­ing, we use a lot of lo­cal con­trac­tors and try to avoid bring­ing in any­thing as much as we can.”  

The com­pa­ny is al­so plan­ning fur­ther ex­pan­sion across Trinidad. Mout­tet said all Lin­da’s lo­ca­tions are ex­pect­ed to be trans­formed in­to the new for­mat by the end of 2026, while ad­di­tion­al con­cepts are al­so be­ing rolled out.  

“We were at 16 stores. We’re at 14 stores now, but we’ll be back up to 16 stores by the end of 2026 be­cause we have a few new mod­els, a few new con­cepts, and stores com­ing on­line.”  

“You’ll see us down in Diego Mar­tin with a Presto Mar­ket that will be com­ing on­line in mid-Ju­ly.”  

Mout­tet said the wider Agos­ti­ni Group re­mains com­mit­ted to in­vest­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go de­spite eco­nom­ic pres­sures.